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[Robsoie]

I always thought they had defined factions, not random ones.
Though factions never was something noticable in FE2 out of the system maps telling which territory systems were belonging to as there was no ongoing faction conflict, i hope they have planned otherwise in Pioneer to make things more lively.
How cool it would be to arrive in the middle of some war with several ships engaging each other.

Anyways, i must have somehow leveled my character while doing several 1 man transport (as they seems to pay more than double than cargo delivery just for 1 man transport, with more passenger it goes even higher) with my added cabin as i start getting mission for advanced pilot, one of them had the mission giver telling me it could be dangerous and i decided to give it a try as i have not yet shot anything in current Pioneer.

Once i arrived in the target system, immediately there was an enemy ship telling me it would take the cargo and my life.

So i targeted the enemy ship and using the reticle in manual control i could then progressively get closer and closer to it (the 2nd line under the ship name is the relative speed to the target, if it's positive the enemy is getting away, if it's negative you're getting closer, make sure it does not get too high in negative or positive or you're going to fly past each other too fast).

There i got behind him and maintain my position (as you see in the screenshot it's 43 positive speed, meaning at the time of the screenshot the enemy is getting away, fortunately nothing i couldn't control by pushing on the reactor until it got back to 0 or negative so i could get closer again)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My ship is nicely keeping its very close distance behind the enemy, that's going to hurt when i'll open fire

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And after so many direct hits, indeed it did hurt a lot as the enemy exploded from the laser shots

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT
By the way for people wanting to do combat in Pioneer and face the "it's like ships are jousting at insane speed, how can they even hit each other ?" problem that everyone faced when starting to play FE2 because people weren't understanding how newtonian physics worked really, i know i was also doing the same mistakes.

several years ago a guy had enough of reading how people where writing that combat in FE2 was impossible.
He made a very good tutorial about how to actually fight in newtonian physics in FE2, and to me it changed what had always been unfun FE2 combat into something actual fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UMIbdN0UFE

All of this completely apply to Pioneer (as i do this myself, "engine off" is "manual control" in Pioneer), with the difference that in Pioneer you can see how exactly fast or slow the distance because of the negative/positive number i mentionned in the post.

[EuchreJack]

What do I do when I want to run away?   

I may have occasionally offended local constabularies by accidentially dumping radioactive waste into the atmosphere of inhabited worlds.

[Robsoie]

To run away, there's a simple tactic : press escape -> load game -> load a previous save from before getting attacked

More seriously, i was landed on the tranquility base on the moon, purchased radioactives, undocked, then once i got control i hoovered very low, near the landing pads and dumped all the radioactives.

Police ships immediately took off and were shooting like crazy (those AI ships seem to undock a lot faster than yours) , i went into set speed mode and pressed enter without releasing it, seems after getting shot a couple of time i managed to get away to orbit and hyperspace to another system i previously selected.

Now if i try the same thing but instead of hoovering very close to the ground i leave my ship where it is after the undocking propelled me up automatically, my ship is destroyed in seconds after the warning "ships nearby".
So i guess if you offend local authority, do not do it while staying above the cops ship as it makes you an easy target.

Anyways, something to remember if you take a rescue mission (a ship is stuck in space in a system, go get its crew while having enough cabins of course) take in account both the hyperspace distance to the ship and the distance to come back.
I mean you may think that you can hyperspace long distance and go save the crew then refuel your hyperspace fuel on a station, but nearly everytime i had to save a ship they were always in a system without any station or starport.

So if you just had enough hyperspace fuel for jumping to the system where the ship is, you're stuck forever too (as it seems Pioneer does not feature you being able to actually launch a sos call like you could in FE2).

Here's transfering the 3 crew of a lost ship into my own.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(it's my 2nd attempt for this ship, on my first attempt i was out of hyperspace fuel and noticed there was no station to refuel it anywhere, and i didn't purchase any fuel scooping , good i thought at least about saving before doing the rescue )

[EuchreJack]

One trick I found is that if you select "Drain fuel", then your fuel tank will decrease, but you'll gain H2 for Hyperspace travel, so as long as your tanks aren't too empty, you still have a supply of hyperspace fuel.  It turns out that spaceship fuel and hyperspace fuel are the same stuff.

[Robsoie]

I thought it was just expelling fuel out of the ship for weight reason
Thanks for pointing this i had no idea.

After doing a lot of those people transport (they're the best paying missions, the last one i got was 1 guy paying 7000 ! ) , i now have +/- 42000 money.
So i thought it should be about time to finally get a better ship than this pile of junk, as in FE2 that would roughly be the time i could get something nice, oh not great but slightly better than the starter ship.

then i checked, and wow those prices are insane, despite all the work and selling the current ship i have i would still be -far- from being able to buy the exact same ship model i currently have. The only one i could afford and leave me near broke is the lowest of the low shuttle (a basically useless thing with ridiculously small cargo)

Loaded FE2 (through GLFrontier, require XP compatibility to run, but it does not change pricing) and checked the price system to see if my memory was betraying me.

I noticed the difference, in Pioneer prices of items for trading are roughly the same as in FE2, rewards from bulletin boards are roughly the same too (passenger mission in Pioneer are very close in money reward actually to the FE2 versions), so it's following rather closely the money balancing of FE2.
But Pioneer ships are way way way higher priced than their FE2 counterpart some 3 or 4 times the prices if not more for some of the ships.

Price seems to be easy to edit as each ship has a .json (so easy to edit with notepad++) in ...\Pioneer\data\ships\

But i noticed in the Pioneer user folder there's a "mods" subfolder, so i wonder if it's actually possible to mod those prices to FE2 level instead of editing the original files.

[EuchreJack]

Yeah, they be expensive, and they seem to start with Class 1 Hyperdrive, dunno how they handle the installed equipment, sold or transferred?

[Robsoie]

The trade is very small, just check and you'll be surprised on how selling your ship you can't even buy the lowest (and near useless) shuttle (despite your ship is much better that it).

about modding :
https://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Mods
It's easier than i thought, just make a copy of the whole "ships" folder , edit each .jsonin that copied folder (personnally i divided all prices by 3 to get roughly a FE2-like system, though some ships may need a bigger divider) and zip this copied "ships" folder , give it a name, by example FE2shipprices.zip

Load Pioneer, go to the Options and in the bottom click on "User Folder"
the file explorer that open, put the your newly created zip file in the mods folder

And voila, the new prices will be available, even on a current save, no need of a new game

[EuchreJack]

Well, the game doesn't alternate Radioactives and Hydrogen any more, but it does when carrying Art Objects for a mission.  So gonna fail this mission because of the interface.

[ollobrains]

Well, the game doesn't alternate Radioactives and Hydrogen any more, but it does when carrying Art Objects for a mission.  So gonna fail this mission because of the interface.

should be easy enough to mod or add in new trade goods actually, perhaps we need different types of radioactives for common and military grade fuel

[Robsoie]

Tried to fit a basic laser beam to replace my pea shooter and tested another dangerous delivery to see if it would make a difference.
My surprise is that the enemy didn't behaved at all like the other one i fought (that had a more classic FE2 behaviour), this enemy was continuously changing direction and aiming for me at full speed, basically he was the one forcing the "jousting" , so  all i could do is only lessen the "jousting" speed by trying to match the AI change or full speed directions.

And it proved to be a mistake, because at low speed jousting the enemy canon shots were more easily landing on my ship, while at higher jousting speed he couldn't hit anything , my laser beam at least didn't had to shoot at the ever changing "lead" so i could hit more often.

Anyways, he had better canon than my original pea shooter as the shots were yellow (so probably MW2 level) so his hits were hitting hard and because of my attempts to control the speed difference i was making things easier for him to hit me.

And the fight ended with my laser beam finally destroying the enemy, then a second later one of the enemy shots landed right on my ship and destroyed it too
that "double KO" was rather hilarious.

EDIT : now i can confim it, the first combat in which it was possible to control the flight similarly to FE2 was very likely a bug, because in all further fights i got, the AI reacted like that :
AI turn toward your general direction and its reactor
let's go for a high speed "jousting" fight !
AI move away then turn toward your general direction and push its reactor
let's go for another high speed "jousting" again !

Basically it's what happened when -you- the player were doing that in FE2, resulting in silly high speed jousting with both side being near hopeless at landing hits. But still in FE2 if instead of brainlessly doing that kind of thing you were actually trying to keep control on your velocity toward each other as shown in video on a previous post you could actually have space combat that wasn't a jousting contest.

But in Pioneer, unlike what i experienced in my first combat (probably something failed to load the AI behaviour) , it's all about "jousting" , something you may want or not (as the AI will actually do it).

You may think that when the AI decide to push its reactor to launch itself at you, you may just have to turn away and push your reactors to keep a certain (or at least more slowly decreasing) distance and so avoid "jousting", but doing that will only allow the AI to have its shots becoming a lot more accurate on you (as if you just go with "jousting" the AI hopelessly shoot everywhere but as everything go too fast it may not land a hit, not much better on your side unless you use beams instead of canons)

I hope the devs will find a way to make space combat more interesting than the jousting party, the AI was more braindead in FE2 but at least that allowed for less silly space fight.

[EuchreJack]

That actually makes some sense based upon what I've experienced.  It seems that the AI only kills me when I'm docking or undocking, the point when my speed is slow and controlled.  General space travel isn't any threat: If the AI comes at you at high speed, and you go at them at high speed, then keep accelerating after the joust in the same direction, they'll be unable to catch up unless they seriously outclass you.

There are also missiles.  I wonder how well the guided variety work.

[Robsoie]

Completely forgot about missiles.

So i purchased 2 guided ones to test and took off on one of the mission "for experienced pilot" , as it usually mean there's someone going to attack you after a hyperspace.

As expected the attack happened, as at first we were long distance (90 something)  i decided to shoot immediately a guided missile on target , it took a long long time to reach its target (at some point i was wondering if it had just disappeared) while i was working my reactor to rush into the enemy (as i wanted to lower the distance a lot to shoot the 2nd missile) at some point i saw a small explosion, so i suppose the missile finally hit (so it seems they're relentless)

At +/- 20 something of distance i shot the 2nd guided missile, after some time (much shorter), another explosion, still the enemy ship was alive.
But i noticed then that either the bug i got previously occured (as the enemy wasn't trying anymore to rush me) , or the level of damage could have changed his behaviour to a "let's run the hell out of there" behaviour, because the enemy was now putting distance (i wish it is that so at least it would not be a bug but an AI making sense trying to stay alive instead of stupidly rushing me only to die).

So i managed to get right near him
Didn't seemed that big of an enemy ship

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So it looks like guided missiles aren't very damaging or the enemy ship had some good shields (i have no way to know that from the reticle unfortunately)

To test the AI i tried to get ahead of him and it didn't shoot me (despite i was showing then my back), possible its laser are destroyed, but again no way to know that.
Anyways, the AI turned back and tried again to run away, confirming that it still react , too bad my laser beam didn't let any chance.

[ollobrains]

recent commit in the issues / new features was dual gun mounts still only shooting at once, but someone has taken on board and we may have the option for more variety of fitting.  The upside of a open source game at least is things can be  added

[Robsoie]

I don't know what to think anymore on the combat system.
I purchased again 2 guided missiles to make another test on a mission requiring "experienced pilot" (so there's surely enemy going to attack).

This time instead of shooting my missiles from afar before the enemy open fire, i waited until we got much closer so the enemy started to shoot, just to be sure there wasn't some bizarre bug that prevented them to attack in past encounters.

Then and only then i launched missile after a while it exploded but no idea at all if they actually hit or if they were destroyed, and again no idea if they even dealt any damage, then launched the 2nd one that also exploded after a while without any idea sadly of its effect or lack of effect.

Anyways, assuming both missiles managed to hit , i noticed it changed nothing for the enemy ship behaviour , it was still going for a jousting behaviour as if it was undamaged.
So either there's no "i must run away because i don't want to die from being too damaged" code like i hoped and there's indeed a bug that prevented the AI attack behaviour somehow in some of my past combat, or this code actually exist but the missiles didn't deal damage (and i have no idea why then) and there really should be a way to know your target status considering all the computer tech involved.

Definitively an area that needs some improvement to be made fun.

edit : reloaded and tested again the same mission.
This time i shot the 2 missiles immediately a very long distance, after a while they exploded (and no idea if they managed to hit or even if they managed to do actual damage)

It didn't changed the AI behaviour anyways, it continued to rush at me and once in range went full jousting behaviour unfortunately.
But i guess the missiles did massive damage this time because i shot only twice my laser beam and the enemy exploded.
So it was probably a bug as in such terrible ship condition the AI should have turned tail and ran for its life, so there's probably no behaviour change code unfortunately, only either it bugs or it's jousting forever :/

[EuchreJack]

Well, the game doesn't alternate Radioactives and Hydrogen any more, but it does when carrying Art Objects for a mission.  So gonna fail this mission because of the interface.

should be easy enough to mod or add in new trade goods actually, perhaps we need different types of radioactives for common and military grade fuel

Just wanted to clarify, when I say "alternate" I mean that the position of the item "Radioactives" and the item "Art Objects" would alternate on which item was the top item and which was the bottom item in the list.  So I would be rapidly pressing the top button to jettison Radioactives, but then they would flop in the interface, and the next click would eject Art Objects.  I suspect it had to do with the fact that "Art Objects" are a mission item and not a trade good (in fact, mission items can't be sold at all).

I am not stating that there is a need to divide up Radioactives.  It would seem that since Hydrogen can be swapped between the fuel tank and the cargo hold, and the function exists to jettison it, that it makes sense for Military Drive radioactives to continue to be stored in the cargo hold.  I am of course talking theoretically, as I have never used Military Drives.